True Familial Respect

I like David Bowie. Or at least, I like his music. I'm not a tremendous Bowie fan, but his music's pretty cool, especially when it's playing on the car radio on what my favorite radio station calls "Triple Play Thursday" (in which they play three consecutive songs by the same artist on Thursdays).

I mention all this because, earlier today, I was in the car with my aunt (who was taking me home from my meeting with my psychologist, but this is beside the point), and we had the radio on, and it was Triple Play Thursday, and the artist who was being triply-played at the moment was, as you might guess, David Bowie.

I did a thing that was interesting. I did not yell, "Yay Bowie!" or begin to jam out or even make any sort of indicator that the Bowie music was coming.

I changed the station.

This is because I know my aunt, while not having an outright known dislike of David Bowie, does not enjoy his sort of music, and I did not want to bother her with it. So I changed it to some music she'd like better. I didn't announce that I was doing this. She didn't say anything. I'm pretty sure she didn't think anything of my sudden station-changing (I frequently vacillate between two stations when we're in the car listening to the radio together). I just...changed the station.

As I did so, I thought, "Changing the radio station when David Bowie is on, and when it's Triple Play Thursday, and not drawing attention to your random act of goodness. Wow, that's what true familial love is."

But I realized that wasn't entirely true. Because I don't love my aunt. Not really. Call me a heartless monster, but I don't love anyone. Even my friends and acquaintances (relationships which I have in the past defined as "people you chose to love") - I don't really love them. I mean, the person who is probably my best friend and with whom I have a pretty close relationship says "I love you" all the time to me, and I have to respond to, "I love you, too, in my high functioning sociopath not-actually-love way". (Fortunately, she accepts this and my reference to BBC Sherlock, and this is why we are friends.)

I don't experience familial love, though. I've been incapable of it for a long time (i.e. ever since I was a tiny child; I have distinct memories of not understanding what my parents meant when they said they "loved" me and knowing I didn't return the feeling). The closest thing I feel for my family could be described as "respect". My family does things that I should respect, partly because they're just my family, partly because they're actually pretty respectable people in a number of ways. Furthermore, they somehow still go out of their way to do things for me (like taking me to my psychologist, letting me live in their houses, allowing me to eat their food, etc.) even though I am almost nineteen and they are thus no longer legally required to do so. I can't love them for it. My lack of emotions (with which there is nothing wrong) won't allow me. But I respect them. And if you literally can't love someone, respect is the next-best thing, pretty much.

I didn't realize this about familial respect, though, until I got back home and, some hours later, so did my father. He had spent a very long time at work (he's a music teacher and a very hard worker - obviously I have respect) and he was tired and hungry. I was in the kitchen when he came in, and he looked in the freezer for some food. A frozen microwavable beef pot pie was the thing he selected.

I like pot pie. I like pot pie even more than I like David Bowie. And given that my fondness for David Bowie is not very extreme, this probably sounds like "I kind of like pot pie". But the thing is, I love pot pie. I find pot pie delicious. I sometimes get excited at the mere suggestion that I am going to consume it in the relatively near future. A threat against my pot pie is a threat against the deepest core of my being.

As you might have guessed, the beef pot pie my father procured from the freezer was mine. My aunt (knowing me and being a good, respectable family member) had once bought me a frozen microwaveable beef pot pie, which I was going to consume at a later date. Except now I never would, because my tired, hard-working, hungry father had gotten to it before me.

The inevitable question escaped his lips as he looked at the box. "Does this pot pie belong to anyone?"

If you think my answer was, "NO YOU CAN'T HAVE IT THAT POT PIE IS MINE FOREVER IT IS NOT YOURS" or anything remotely like that, you would be mistaken.

My answer was, instead, "No. You can have it."

Probably my father suspected that I was lying. (I think it was because he was just as aware of my love for pot pie as much as you are now.) He said, "This pot pie isn't yours?"

And I gave the truthful answer of, "Well, it was supposed to be, but you can have it. Really, you can."

There came that little thought again. "Giving your father your pot pie when he's hungry. Wow, that's what..."

My brain did not fill in with "true familial love" this time, because I had been over that earlier and I knew that "love" was not the correct word.

I reexamined my feelings for my father. He is a good man, a hard worker, an excellent father, and very much worthy of that pot pie. An ordinary person with ordinary feelings (i.e. love) might have loved him. And that would have been good, because my father is a man who ought to be loved. I don't love him. My lack of emotions (with which there is nothing wrong) won't allow me. But I respect him. And if you literally can't love someone, respect is the next-best thing, pretty much.

I said, "Dad, you can have that pot pie, because that's true familial respect."

If you think the next thing he did was say something that translated roughly to "good for you, true familial respect is a wonderful thing", you would be mistaken.

He said, "So how long do you put this in the microwave for?"

I told him (nine minutes - I am well-versed in the ways of microwaving frozen pot pies) and, with a smile, he thanked me and put the beef pot pie in the microwave. I'm pretty sure his smile was over the fact that he was about to eat some dinner and had found something suitable, for which he would only have to wait nine minutes to eat.

With a smile, I you're-welcomed him and went off to my room. I'm pretty sure my smile was because I had figured out what had produced the motivations behind my actions today and I now had a name for it.